Reddit COO Jen Wong says the company has revenue sharing deals with the NFL, the NBA, MLB, and others to get video and other content, hoping to draw advertisers
Reddit, known for its chat forums on everything from Proust to Wall Street stocks, is going big on sports.
Context & Ripple Effects
Reddit has been building its advertising stack for years, including video ads and a redesigned ad-buying platform and later agency pitches around premium ad units. League-supplied material extends that effort from user-generated discussion into more recognizable video inventory.
The company is also developing content licensing as a revenue line: later coverage said Google and OpenAI licensing deals represented about 10% of revenue. Sports partnerships apply the broader logic of monetizing access to content in support of the ad business.
First-order effects
- Reddit gains a licensed source of sports video and other material from the NFL, NBA, MLB and additional partners, while the leagues gain a revenue-sharing distribution channel.
- Advertisers can be offered sports-adjacent placements supported by authorized league content rather than relying solely on community posts.
Second-order effects
- Reddit’s sales organization can package sports content with its established ad products, increasing pressure to show marketers that its community context and video inventory can support premium campaigns.
- For leagues, revenue sharing creates another way to monetize and distribute clips across fan communities, potentially making platform partnerships more central to their digital-content strategy.
Third-order effects
- If repeated across media categories, social discussion platforms may increasingly operate as licensed-content distributors as well as hosts of user-generated communities, changing what inventory advertisers expect them to control.
- The pattern points to a broader split in platform content economics: companies may monetize content through both ad-supported distribution and direct licensing, though the durability of either route depends on advertiser demand and partner economics.
The trend: Community platforms are turning content partnerships into a two-track monetization strategy that combines premium advertising inventory with licensing revenue.